Ad:Tech New York Interactive Marketing Expo and Conference is THE premier conference for those marketing in the digital age. Which means everyone. It will be held over four days (November 5-8, 2007) in our backyard, Manhattan. Anybody who’s anybody in advertising, marketing and online media will be there. Nick Brien, CEO of Universal McCann, will deliver the keynote address.

We will be there to cover the Conference, looking for cool new technology and applications. Imaginuity will debut the first advergame for iPhones and iMediaStreams will officially launch (we nabbed a briefing). Count on us getting the skinny at the event, as well as at the various parties— that’s where the juicy stuff gets out.

Arianna Huffington, whose The Huffington Post represents the new breed of media giant, will be part of the keynote Roundtable (The State of the Industry), along with Michael Barrett of Fox Interactive Media, Suzie Reider of YouTube, and Matt Freeman of Tribal DDB Worldwide. Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB, will moderate.

Check the schedule of Conference panels here. Speaker roster is here. Exhibitors here . Sponsors here. (hey Rudy, rev up the RV)

[tags] advertising, marketing, ad tech, web 2.0, Huffington Post, digital media, technology [tags]

How to Split an Atom is a cool blog devoted to Web 2.0 (”and how to survive it”), GTD culture, How Tos (of course) and more. It is written by Steven Spalding. I love the way Steven writes and communicates. I found his most excellent blog through MyBlogLog, still one of my favorite sources for finding new and interesting blogs. And I think this is going to be a great one, if he sticks with it. Steven and his buds at the University of Florida are working on a project called Orangeply. It’s all very hush-hush. These Gators are smart, hip and hungry. We’ll be watching out for them.

Here’s what you get at How To:

A sprinkling of life hacks, meta filtering, product reviews and journalism all at a break neck pace. Think of it as the espresso of weblogs, twice the calories with half the size. If you get nothing else out of it remember that at the end of the day, just like espresso, reading How To Split An Atom will at least make you look smarter.

Check it out. The guy can even see the future.

Here’s what we call a useful archive of blog content. [Hey, Realivent, where's that Table of Contents widget we talked about?].

What is Blog Finder?

Blog Finder is a Sellsius series showcasing interesting and cool blogs flying under the radar. If you know of others, send us an email and link to sellsius(at)gmail(dot)com. We look for those on real estate, marketing, advertising, technology, social networking, copywriting, innovative content and presentation.

Technorati Tags: Blog Finder, Web 2.0, How to Split an Atom, Steven Spalding, Orangeply

Amazon UnSpun is a community opinion site that helps you find the best of anything.  If you believe in the Wisdom of Crowds, this site will interest you. Just our opinion. The site is newly launched so the data is limited. According to UnSpun:

The Best Real Estate Websites:

1. Realtor.com
2. Re/Max
3. Century21
4. Yahoo Real Estate (Prudential)
5. Coldwell Banker
6. Craigslist
7. Zillow
8. Real Estate abc
9. Yahoo.com
10. Realestate Agencies.net

If you don’t like the standings, go and register your vote.

Best Pizza in NYC: Lombardi’s (my favorite, DeNinos finished 19).  A fun site.

Sellsius has added you as a contact.

Have you received this message in your email yet? If you’re a blogger, you probably will if you join MyBlogLog and visit Sellsius (come by and say hello). IMHO, MyBlogLog is the hottest thing in the blogosphere. MBL is building a community network of bloggers and readers, encouraging us to make contact with each other, learn about each other’s interests (other blogs) and showcase our blogs. The community links are great for discovering new blogs. I’ve found a number of really good ones, well under the radar, for now. And I’ve just scratched the surface.

MyBlogLog is utterly simple to use, but very powerful. Just sign up, add your profile, join a hot community, add a link to your blog and you’re off. You’ll see who visits and leaves a comment. Once you begin adding contacts, you’ll be added back. Make a comment and make a friend. Discover cool blogs. It’s a viral community. Before you know it, you will be looking forward to the “…..has added you as a contact” in your email. And when you do, you’ll invariably visit the site and meet someone new— or maybe even an old friend.

Here’s a great MBL tool—- a Wordpress widget which displays fellow MBLers when they visit your site and let’s you be displayed on their blogs. So even if they don’t make a comment, you know they stopped by. Fantastic.

The complete guide to MBL is here. MyBlogLog is a great site that deserves great success.

Update: The MBL widget is also available for Typad blogs (thanks Teresa).

No fee apartment rentals in your city are available, if you know where to look. Start by looking here (in the Comments) [Curbed]

Wesabe is a new Web 2.0 site—call it MoneySaving 2.0. A great idea, for who among us does not want to save money? And who doesn’t like sharing a money saving tip? There lies the site’s biggest appeal. Yes, they would like you to enter your financial accounts but I’m not ready for that. I just joined for the Bud Light tips.

If you’re a real estate broker, mortgage broker or anyone who wants to share money saving tips, check out wesabe.
H/T: BoingBoing.

Related Post:

Tricks of the Trade: Where Professionals Spill the Beans

We subscribe to Ma.gnolia, a social bookmarking website. Social bookmarking sites are communities which share, tag and evaluate web pages. What we like about Ma.gnolia is its “Roots” widget, which is easily added to your browser toolbar. Here’s how it works. When you’re on a web page, or blog post, click the icon to see what the Ma.gnolia community has to say about it. There is a lot of competition in the social bookmarking/sharing sites. If the Ma.gnolia community grows enough to compete with delicious, digg, redditt, Fark and the other big guns, it will be because of innovations like this one. We wish them luck.

Hit Parade

Getting on the front page of a top social site will guarantee over 10,000 visitors to your site. It’s called the digg effect. We know how it feels. One of our posts hit the front page and sent us over 20,000 visitors in 1 day, and several thousand thereafter. The knock on this traffic is that it is temporary and not your target audience. While the traffic is temporary, some of those thousands of visitors will subscribe and become regular visitors. Digg likes tech tips while those crazy Farkers prefer humor and offbeat stories. The Farker sensibility can be found in the Photoshop entries.

Related posts:

News Blogs, Citizen Journalism & Social Bookmarking Sites. (a quick list of social sites with LINKS)

Other Resources:

3 Reasons why Delicious Bookmarks Beat Digg Traffic Hands Down[Performancing]
How to Land On The Digg Home Page [MicroPersuasion]
10 Stes to Guarantee You make the Digg Front Page [SEO Blackhat]

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” (Charles Mackay)

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki is often cited for the proposition “the large crowd is smarter than the expert few”. The proposition has at least four prerequisites, however: a diverse, decentralized and independent thinking crowd and a means of measuring the collective verdict. Now that’s a tall order to get the benefit of collective wisdom. Without those stars in alignment, the exceptions overcome the rule. The author has said that the crowd can come up with “remarkably stupid decisions.” and a good chunk of his book shows how crowds can “go mad” and “succumb to delusions”. To understand more about crowds see, for starters, tulip mania, information cascade, bandwagon effect and the herding instinct. Just because the lines are long at McDonald’s does not make it the healthiest or tastiest food. Other examples: AOL & Internet Explorer.

Surowiecki was quoted as saying:

Essentially, any time most of the people in a group are biased in the same direction, it’s probably not going to make good decisions. So when diverse opinions are either frozen out or squelched when they’re voiced, groups tend to be dumb. And when people start paying too much attention to what others in the group think, that usually spells disaster, too. For instance, that’s how we get stock-market bubbles, which are a classic example of group stupidity: instead of worrying about how much a company is really worth, investors start worrying about how much other people will think the company is worth. The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that the best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions. (emphasis added)

Since I will always question the wisdom of crowds, you can put me in the camp of Charles MacKay & John Kennedy Toole. I do not presuppose a wise crowd, especially if I can’t identify the individuls who make up the crowd.

Postscript: There are two Suroweicki examples I often hear to support the truth of “the large crowd is wiser than the few experts” mantra which I’d like to poke some holes in (just for fun).

1. The lost submarine. It seems the ones questioned were all “experts” in fields which had a useful relevance, i.e., engineering, physics, oceanography, ballistics. Had they asked the “man on the street” crowd (certainly a more diverse crowd), that sub would still be missing. So pick your large crowd wisely. Conversely, guessing the weight of a pig takes no real expertise. It’s more a function of being above a certain age & life experience. Ask a large crowd of grade school kids & that average pig weight won’t be close. I’ll take that wager any day. And I’ll wager a group of local real estate experts comes closer to guessing the weight value of my house than a diverse group of real estate experts from out-of-town, not to mention a crowd of statisticians with no real estate experience in my town and a software program using public tax assessment data. I would not rely on that confederacy for the wisdom I need.

2. The “Poll The Audience” lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire gives more correct answers than “Call a Friend”. For one, the poll is done for easier questions & call a friend for the really hard ones. Secondly, the friend called is not usually an expert on the question asked. But even the Poll can be wrong in finding Truth. Do a “Poll the Audience” for the question “Is the earth flat or round*?. The audience would overwhelmingly say “flat” before Columbus sailed.

So, think before following the crowd & always use experts. Just get more than one opinion. That’s just common sense. Happy Columbus Day.

* the earth is currently believed to be an oblate spheroid.

Do what Islandoo does. It’s looking for candidates for a UK television show called Shipwrecked, which airs on BBC America and the UK’s Channel 4. It asks visitors to submit a photo, create a personal profile and add comments. The result: Yes, 800,000 daily pageviews. Now that’s web 2.X.

This shows the power of contests and the appeal of appearing on television. How can a real estate brokerage use this example to garner visits to its website? What kind of contest could you run? Could you award a television appearance? What about offering to pay someone’s mortgage for a year if they buy a home on your website or use you as their broker? Not only will you get visitors, you’ll get press. Like we’re hoping to do with this 50 blog psot marathon. Are we almost done? My fingers are killing me.

Todd Mintz at Search Engine Guide Blog explains how you can add your knowledge to Wikipedia, the community generated online resource database. Read his article here on how to create your own Wikipedia page. It’s not difficult–I’ve tried it.

To create a new page you should use the Sandbox. It’s a place to play with your entry. When the preview is just right you can submit or save it. I’ve played in the Sandbox to create the entry for unzillowable but I’m waiting for some newspaper references before finalizing the page for recognition. So if you know anybody in media, see if they’d do an article on unzillowable. Then send me the link if they do.

TIP: Wikipedia is often a better than Google when researching a topic you want to blog about. Also use Technorati to see if other bloggers have covered the topic.